Ask HN: What do Google, Facebook, and Amazon have in common? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What do Google, Facebook, and Amazon have in common?

8 pointsfamfam5 comments

These companies more or less eschew "graphic design" (not saying they eschew or ux or "just design") - they constist mostly of content with the tiniest bits of chrome to demarcate things.

Is this a function of catering to the lowest common denominator? Page speed? Is it what's made them successful? Is it a reflection of the fact that graphic design just interferes with app functionality or tries to obfuscate bad app functionality?

I think about all the sites that have whimsical designs, with arbitrarily chosen motifs, and think -- this is so subjective. Not everyone will like it. Some people will love it. Why risk it? White backgrounds verifiably do not not work, so why use background images? Why have clever iconage? It's bound to confuse at least a few people.

Can graphic design only impede "transactional" websites?

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Google and Amazon (I'm not so sure about Facebook...) have realized that, while design is nice, usability hooks regular users.

Take Amazon; technically not a very "beautiful" interface - but it is functional. And if you read their occasional technical posts from the UX side of things you realize quite how much effort went into the placement and wording of buttons.

Certain sites require great (subtle) graphics (I think Apple have always done this very well; their graphic designs are pretty complex but still look simple and elegant) either as part of their brand or because their demographic demands it.

But Amazon is not a place people sit and read for a few hours (for example). They go on, search for something and want to see all the information presented as fast as possible. Same with Google, except you spend even shorter time on their sites.

As to Facebook; I think in the past they have displayed little consideration for design OR good UX/UI in previous incarnations. Some of the changes they've made in the past were hilarious :P but recently things have improved and I think they figured much the same thing as Google et al.

Your notion of graphic design alludes to the idea that more is better, while all good designers and artists know less is more.

All the sites you mentioned do have beautiful graphic design, clean style, and usability.

Because what Google and Apple have shown everyone is that a great interface is minimal, neat and efficient.

The most useful webapps i've seen where always also websites with a minimal design (soup.io and animoto.com are examples of those, love the UIs, animoto is rather simple when editing.. startpage is overly complex to advertise the features)

Is it just me or are a lot of web apps using the same layout as animoto.com?